Olympus E-500 Kit lenses with adapter or new Micro Lens for Panasonic GH3?

Olympus E-500 Kit lenses with adapter or new Micro Lens for Panasonic GH3?

Jan 15, 2014

I currently own an Olympus E-500 from a Dual Lens kit that I bought back in 2008. The two lenses are the standard kit lens of 14-45mm f3.5-5.6 and the telephoto lens of 40-150mm and f3.5-4.5.

I'm about to grab a Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH3 body only and I'm trying to figure out if it will suffice to purchase a Four Thirds to Micro adapter in order to use my current two lenses, or if I should just buy a Micro Lens for the GH3.

I've heard that there are autofocusing issues when using the Four Thirds with an adapter, but are there any other issues?

If the adapter is a viable option, is there an adapter that's cheaper than the Panasonic brand adapter that works just as well, or would it be best to just drop the extra dollars on the Panasonic adapter?

If it would be best to just get a Micro Four Thirds Lens, would I be able to get a decent lens between $100-$300? I know lenses can be crazy expensive, but to be honest, the two lenses that came with my E-500 have served me very well. I would definitely welcome an increase in quality, but as long as it would be at least on par, that's all I could ask for. I would actually really like a "Superzoom" Lens that goes from 14mm or so up to 150-200 mm or so, but I checked a couple of those out and they seem to start at around $600...which are probably the cheap ones But...I'm pretty new to all this and I don't know which lenses are actually good quality lenses and which ones are overpriced, etc. I never invested much into my E-500 because I didn't really have a lot of money (and I still don't), but at the very least I'd like to know more and so I've been reading and asking questions.

I apologize if this has been discussed btw. I did a search and found some mentions of a four thirds adapter, but while it was useful information, it didn't quite have the specific information I was looking for.